Variegated Yarns and Socks

I love the look of variegated sock yarns. So much so that I am constantly attracted to them when at sales, such as the recent YarnCon. This yarn was purchased at YarnCon from Bumblebee Acres, I loved the colors.

It was described as having red stripes, with the rainbows between the stripes, and periods black dots (which are not overly prominent on the skein). Unfortunately, the vendor had nothing knit up with any of these yarns. The yarn wound up beautifully into the cake.

Then, I started knitting it up…

I knew that there were black spots interspersed, although I was not sure why. The dots were very prominent on the first sock, and then got less as the sock was knit up. I opted to make a short pair of socks with this, both because I was less than pleased with the color repeat, and because I think that these may make nicer fingerless mitts. I did love how the heel knit up, and this fell in line with the description given to me by the vendor.

You can clearly see a distinction between sock #1 and sock #2. Not my favorite, but they are cute short socks. We will see how the yarn knits up into fingerless mitts.

I like them very much, but I have always struggled with yarns like this – I think my feet are wider than they plan for when they make the stripes – so I get socks like yours, when I want them striped like the heels. I figure if my socks were 58 or 60 stitches around, it would work right. So maybe in the mitts, it will work just fine!

It took me a bit ot find the thread about clown barf – Loose Ends. Man that made me feel better, there are some seriously ugly variegated projects. But the dyers keep reeling us in with those beautiful color combinations. Thanks for the good laugh of the day.

What a shame that the finished result isn’t what you were expecting or hoped for. The heels are far nicer looking than the body of the socks and much more what I would expect from a variegated yarn. The stripes on the body aren’t wide enough for me and make the finished socks look far too busy for my liking but they are bright and colourful. I hope the colourway of the remaining yarn works better in your mitts and leaves you feeling less disgruntled 🙂 x

I can understand you not wanting to try the mitts right now – hopefully some of your other yarns will yield happier results for you. It’s a shame that giving a new dyer a chance has had such a negative outcome 😦

Was it marketed as self-stripe or variegated? I like both of the fabrics, heel and sock….and my Hubs loves “clown barf” yarn, so I have lots of it! I have the opposite…I have very skinny feet, but also very prominent bunions…ugly feet….